Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to electronic commerce and, more particularly, to systems and methods for facilitating online purchasing and payments by integrating product advertisement and purchasing abilities within content a user is viewing.
Related Art
Computer systems and networks can facilitate the tasks of buying, selling and transferring goods and services in retail and other marketplaces. For example, a consumer can pay for an item from either an online merchant or at a point of sale of a brick-and-mortar store through the use of a payment provider that can be accessed on his or her smart phone, tablet, laptop computer, desktop computer, or other personal mobile or desktop device. In particular, users of a payment provider can use the payment provider website or a payment provider application or “app” on a mobile device to make payments to various online or offline merchants.
Oftentimes the payment system, the purchasing system, and the advertisement system are all disconnected, causing an inefficient purchasing process for an individual or user. For example, a user may be reading an article comparing two different products, one of which the user plans to purchase. Once the user has decided which product to purchase, the user must search for a marketplace or merchant that sells the product. Once a merchant has been chosen, the user will often have to decide on how the user plans to pay for the product, such as through a payment provider, entering a credit card, and so on. This is quite a cumbersome process.
Sometimes, the user may be browsing content and see an image of a product that the user wants to buy. The user may be unable to identify the product and may have to conduct a search for the product. After identifying the product, the user may have to go through the purchasing process discussed above, distracting the user from the content the user was consuming.
Furthermore, some content providers may want to attract sponsors or be paid for products they advertise or discuss in their content. In the current modes of advertising, the user must include awkwardly placed ads (usually in a column next to the content provider's content) and/or popup ads that distract a user from the content. These ads hurt the user experience by cluttering the content providing medium. These types of ads negatively affect the content provider by deterring users from returning to consume more content.
Therefore, a system and method for un-intrusively inserting ads and product purchasing options within content such that users are uninterrupted or minimally interrupted from viewing the content are highly desirable.
Embodiments of the present disclosure and their advantages are best understood by referring to the detailed description that follows. It should be appreciated that like reference numerals are used to identify like elements illustrated in one or more of the figures, wherein showings therein are for purposes of illustrating embodiments of the present disclosure and not for purposes of limiting the same.